Assuming you consider “culture” to be an inherent trait…
Let me ask you what “outside” factor you think might be causing the poorest racial group in NYC to significantly outperform the richest racial group in NYC?
I will ask you the same question:
What lack of opportunities do the wealthier white children of NYC suffer that the poor asian children of NYC do not?
There is one very important statistic missing from your post: What each group of people earns per job held. If group A gets paid so much, and group B has to work 2 or three jobs to get the same amount, then group A will have the free time to join the organizations and volunteer while Group B doesn’t.
Maybe they suffer from having too many opportunities? They know they have it made no matter how they do in school. Whereas poorer kids may know that this is their only shot. No Daddy money bags to bail them out, get them into Yale etc…
We don’t. There is nothing we can do to make every man love his fellow man like his brother. We can only make fair laws and prohibit discrimination in education and labor. We can’t change the rules of society to correct for private discrimination that exists in the hearts of men, can we?
I’m all in favor of fair laws, fighting discrimination, etc. I want a fair society with real equality of opportunity. Institutional discrimination is much more harmful than private feelings of bigotry. We haven’t come close to eliminating either one.
If we use sports as an example, we can compare Canada and Germany in men’s soccer. Both nations are racially similar (in case someone wants to cite some sports-genetics argument.) Yet Germany has been one of the world’s best soccer nations for 70 years, while Canada has only ever qualified for a World Cup once (in the 1980s, then never again). It’s not because of lack of opportunity - Canada has every FIFA opportunity to qualify for the men’s World Cup - indeed, the CONCACAF structure actually makes it even easier for Canada to get to the World Cup than in Europe’s. It’s not lack of resources - both nations are wealthy, have a talent pool of many thousands of potential athletes they could recruit from, etc.
The main argument would be culture; Canada has long been a hockey nation while Germany loves soccer.
Well, that’s probably the worst example to use because discrimination is probably a much larger factor in explaining the disparity there than between any two other groups.
If you live in a black and white world then the liberal perspective is much easier to understand. But there are other races and the theory starts to implode a bit when you add the other races.
I think that if discrimination did not exist, then the black community would have a different culture that would lead to a much smaller disparity.
I think that discrimination and second class citizenship can lead to criminality, poverty, lower IQ, unemployment, looser morals, low academic achievement. It is hard to overcome, especially if you are black in America.
But let me ask you what you think of the fact that the poorest racial group in NYC academically outperforms the richest racial group in NYC. Does that disparity in outcome necessarily mean that poor asians have more opportunities in NYC or that wealthy whites have less opportunity?
That makes sense for sports, but I don’t think it makes sense for things like poverty, lower life expectancy, lead poisoning, breathing problems, etc. No culture has a preference for these things over their lack.
I wouldn’t look at just one statistic to make this kind of judgement. Do whites in NYC have lower incomes, worse health and life expectancy outcomes, lesser representation among high executives and officials, etc.? Do Asians? If we had all that kind of information, we might be able to determine if there’s any inequality of opportunity relating to these groups.
Wait. So your answer is affluenza? Or some close cousin of affluenza?
I consider myself a liberal, and if other liberals disagree with me I would be happy to hear from them as well. I think you’re missing and in fact seem to be actively dismissing the main issue. Culture does make a difference and I believe is THE biggest issue. But that IS an opportunity that needs equalizing. Having parents that value education is way more important than having parents that are rich or geniuses. Dismissing culture as somehow being apart from opportunity fails at the most basic level. Coming from a good culture that values education is not only part of opportunity, it’s the most important factor.
ETA. And as mentioned upthread the wealthiest families probably have a culture of relying on their money and connections and caring less about education.
It feels like we have had this discussion before.
Nonetheless, it is a question that lends itself to analysis.
Now, we know that single parents, mostly mothers, and their children are disproportionately likely to be in poverty. And likewise that the children of single mothers are disproportionately subject to the various social ills you describe - poorer educational outcomes, higher rates of crime, unemployment, etc. The interesting thing is that this is the case for black and white single mothers alike - both suffer from higher rates of these social ills, for themselves and their children. So now we examine the groups of “black Americans in general” and “white Americans in general” and see if, for instance, there is a difference in incidence of single parenting, mostly mothers.
If one group experiences single parenthood at 40%, and the other at 73%, one would predict that the group at 73% would be disproportionately suffering from the various social ills. And sure enough, that’s what we see. No inherent factors needed.
Regards,
Shodan
Of course it’s not only driven by wealth – I was using that as an example. Racial prejudice (positive and negative), sexism, culture, etc., all play a part as well.
It’s not that I don’t believe you, but can you provide a cite for the NYC thing you’ve mentioned several times now? It’s not all that relevant, since NYC isn’t everything and income is just one factor that can lead to differences in opportunity. But, I’m still curious which weird statistical thing you’ve discovered.
Anyway, OP – If you can’t use results to try and find differences in opportunity among broad groups, how do you propose trying to find those differences in opportunity? Do you think there’s value in eliminating such differences? Differences in results is a nice, measurable proxy, imperfect though it is.
So you don’t know whether or not to consider this unequal results?
What if I said that hispanics also underperformed asians academically in NYC, would that be the result of a lack of opportunity or would you go through the same exercise?
What if the result was that hispanics had lower life expectancy that asians but higher than whites (asians and hispanics generally have longer life expectancy than whites) and hispanics were over-represented in elected office and political appointments.
At some point you are just making excuses to keep believing what you want to believe aren’t you?
So you think we need to provide more opportunities to the children of parents that don’t value education in order to equalize the benefit that kids with better parents enjoy?
Are you ducking kidding?
Maybe? I don’t know how you’d go about proving that. However, I’m sure we agree that the disparity would be much, much less.
Of course I think that. The way to do so, however, is by changing those cultures so that they do value education. Are you saying that those cultures where parents are less likely to value education should continue to place a low value on education?
The problem I see is in talking about black or Asian or white culture. What does that even mean? I teach at a prestigious public magnet school. We are about 15% Asian. About half those kids come from the same neighborhood. Its very professional class, and its half Asian, almost entirely South Indian. If you want to talk about the shared culture of those kids, I’m happy to do it. And I’m happy to talk about the impact it has on education. But the other half of the Asian kids we serve, including the South Indian ones, come from all over the city, have all sorts of different backgrounds, and very different family and local cultures.
In the same way, I know communities of black professionals who will out Tiger mom any Asian parent you ever met; white communities where not being a jock would be much more shameful than not being National Merit. Asian groups that are ashamed of the kid who abandons his family to go to college instead of getting a job right now.
So assigning “culture” to a huge % of the world and using that to explain disparity of outcome seems insane to me. There are absolutely smaller groups that have cultures that shape outcomes, but extrapolating that to explain differences in outcome across the nation makes no sense.
As far as the disparity in NYC, I’d look to see if there are even smaller groups that do have a shared culture that are shaping the results.